Free James Herriot by All Things Wise, Wonderful

magazine which lay in a clearing among mounds of dirty dishes and her curlers nodded as she looked up briefly at us.
    On a couch under the window her husband sprawled asleep, open-mouthed, snoring out the reek of beer. The sink, which held a further supply of greasy dishes, was covered in a revolting green scum. Clothes, newspapers and nameless rubbish littered the floor and over everything a radio blasted away at full strength.
    The only clean new thing was the dog basket in the corner. I went across and bent over the little animal. Duke was now prostrate and helpless, his body emaciated and jerking uncontrollably. The sunken eyes had filled up again with pus and gazed apathetically ahead.
    “Wes,” I said. “You’ve got to let me put him to sleep.”
    He didn’t answer, and as I tried to explain, the blaring radio drowned my words. I looked over at his mother.
    “Do you mind turning the radio down?” I asked.
    She jerked her head at the boy and he went over and turned the knob. In the ensuing silence I spoke to him again.
    “It’s the only thing, believe me. You can’t let him die by inches like this.”
    He didn’t look at me. All his attention was fixed desperately on his dog. Then he raised a hand and I heard his whisper.
    “Awright.”
    I hurried out to the car for the Nembutal.
    “I promise you he’ll feel no pain,” I said as I filled the syringe. And indeed the little creature merely sighed before lying motionless, the fateful twitching stilled at last.
    I put the syringe in my pocket. “Do you want me to take him away, Wes?”
    He looked at me bewilderedly and his mother broke in.
    “Aye, get ’im out. Ah never wanted t’bloody thing ’ere in t’first place.” She resumed her reading.
    I quickly lifted the little body and went out. Wes followed me and watched as I opened the boot and laid Duke gently on top of my black working coat.
    As I closed the lid he screwed his knuckles into his eyes and his body shook. I put my arm across his shoulders, and as he leaned against me for a moment and sobbed. I wondered if he had ever been able to cry like this—like a little boy with somebody to comfort him.
    But soon he stood back and smeared the tears across the dirt on his cheeks.
    “Are you going back into the house, Wes?” I asked.
    He blinked and looked at me with a return of his tough expression.
    “Naw!” he said and turned and walked away. He didn’t look back and I watched him cross the road, climb a wall and trail away across the fields towards the river.
    And it has always seemed to me that at that moment Wes walked back into his old life. From then on there were no more odd jobs or useful activities. He never played any more tricks on me but in other ways he progressed into more serious misdemeanours. He set barns on fire, was up before the magistrates for theft and by the time he was thirteen he was stealing cars.
    Finally he was sent to an approved school and then he disappeared from the district. Nobody knew where he went and most people forgot him. One person who didn’t was the police sergeant.
    “That young Wesley Binks,” he said to me ruminatively. “He was a wrong ’un if ever I saw one. You know, I don’t think he ever cared a damn for anybody or any living thing in his life.”
    “I know how you feel, sergeant,” I replied, “but you’re not entirely right. There was one living thing …”

CHAPTER6
    T RISTAN WOULD NEVER HAVE won any prizes as an exponent of the haute cuisine.
    We got better food in the RAF than most people in wartime Britain but it didn’t compare with the Darrowby fare. I suppose I had been spoiled; first by Mrs. Hall, then by Helen. There were only brief occasions at Skeldale House when we did not eat like kings and one of those was when Tristan was installed as temporary cook.
    It began one morning at breakfast in the days when I was still a bachelor and Tristan and I were taking our places at the mahogany dining table. Siegfried bustled in,